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URM Stores, which includes Rosauers Supermarkets and Yoke’s Fresh Markets, announced Monday night that modern credit card systems were placed back online Monday night after extra security systems were implemented.

But those measures won’t protect customers who used their cards at the stores prior to Nov. 25. Officials stress that anyone who used a credit or debit card at Rosauers or other URM affiliated store prior to that date should pay close attention to bank statements.

“We’d like to offer our apologizes to our customers for their frustration and inconvenience,” Ray Sprinkle, CEO of URM Stores, said late Monday. “Our customer support has just been unbelievable.”

Citing an open investigation, Sprinkle declined to provide details of what has been learned so far about the attack. He said URM has hired “leading national” companies to work with law enforcement.

A news release from the company said that with the attack blocked, the focus will switch Toms Shoes to pinpointing which stores were affected and when it began. Companies that issued cards with numbers that were most likely to be stolen will be notified.

URM Stores is a Spokane based wholesaler that processes a large share of the electro Toms Shoes nic payments made by shoppers at Yoke’s, Rosauers, Super 1 Foods, Family Foods, CenterPlace Market, and Trading Company stores. URM owns Rosauers and is partially owned by the other stores it serves.

Three days before Thanksgiving, URM Stores recommended that its stores only accept cash and checks to put a halt to an attack as reports mounted from banks Toms Shoes and credit unions that noticed fraudulent purchases on accounts of shoppers who used cards at URM Stores.

A Secret Service agent involved in the investigation told The Spokesman Review last month that the case is the largest outbreak of credit card fraud he’s seen in nine years in Spokane.

For the past week, Rosauers stores put plastic bags over its new credit card readers in each cashiers aisle but accepted cards through a slower but safer dial up connection. Rosauers offered 10 percent discounts to make up for the inconvenience.

Sprinkle said sales at URM Stores over the holiday period showed “mixed results” with sales up in some stores and down in others.

Now, let’s talk about something really important the number of plastic shopping bags blowing through the Patapsco Drainage Basin. Have you seen them this year? They’re swarming. From Glenelg to Glen Burnie, from Pylesville to Pikesville, from Arbutus to Arcadia, from Pigtown to Joppatowne, from Hereford to Thereford you get the idea these bags cling to tree limbs and chain link fences. They’re a menace. If he were not dead, Ed Wood would make a movie about them.

We had a long winter, see, with lots of snow panic shopping; too many people making too many trips to the supermarket equals too many blue bags. And people get sick of these blue plastic bags, see, and they toss them. They just toss them! And the bags end up blowing down streets, and swirling with the wind, and sticking to trees and bushes and thick grass and small children.

Now, what to do about them? (The bags, I mean.)

Tell you what they did in East Baltimore. Starting three years ago, the Butchers Hill Streetscape Committee declared war on plastic bags in trees. Three “tree debaggers” have been conducting regular patrols.

According to Steve Young, who lives over near Patterson Park, the debaggers’ weapon of choice is a heavyduty Mr. Longarm Pro Lok telescoping aluminum pole (Model No. 2324) with a utility knife blade attached to a yellow screw on piece originally designed to hold a paint brush. “By carefully working the razor blade, we can remove bags quickly and effectively, without damage to the tree,” Young reported to the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, which promotes community cleanups. “We carry our poles with the blade pointing up, out of the way of danger, we always wear gloves and we avoid situations where electrical wires are present.”

I like this community spirit, the dedication of volunteers and a nod to jousting, Maryland’s official sport. But keep your eyes on this, friends. I’m thinking, in six years, tree debagging will be an exhibition sport at the Winter Olympics. Or watch for it on ESPN2, or Home Team Sports. You think I’m kidding, but I’m as serious as a utility knife.

Right idea, wrong line

Bad enough you always pick the supermarket line where the cash register runs out of tape, or the computer goes down, or there’s a price check, or the guy in front of you has a credit card that won’t scan. Ever pick the wrong line at a state mot Toms Shoes or vehicle emissions test center? It can make you the angriest dog on Earth. yesterday to find two of the four lines open. He did the obvious picked the shorter line, in the far left lane.

And, of course, the line of four cars in front of him didn’t move.

And, of course, the cars in the much longer line, in the adjacent lane, moved steadily.

And, of course, an attendant opened the inspection bay at the far right, waving in cars that were just arriving.

Had he been a more excitable lad, my friend would have opened his car window and screamed. Instead, he waited, and after 10 minutes his line started moving again. Fifteen minutes after that, his ’82 Buick klunker was examined. And (sigh) it passed muster. Toms Shoes “My wife’s Chevy is due for inspection in May,” our friend says. “I think I’ll try Lane No. 2.”

It has been 13 years since we nailed the first bluebird box to that fence post on the upper pasture of an old farm. We had never seen bluebirds. Heard about them. Never seen them. Old timers used to tell stories about seeing lots of bluebirds flickering and flashing royal as they darted across meadows from here to Maine. And then, in the middle of the 20th century, they started to disappear. There’s plenty of science on why that happened clean farming, loss of habitat, too much development, too many people pulling down too many old, rotting trees, not enough good nesting sites.

First scientists, then bird lovers, discovered a solution: Put up those deep well boxes in places that make bluebirds comfortable on the edges of farm fields, close to trees but not in woods. So, that’s what we did 13 years ago, as an experiment. Within a week or so, a male and a female moved in; we named them Babs and Orson (after Barbara Mikulski and Orson Welles, but don’t ask me why). Babs and Orson had three broods that spring and summer of 1983 (coincidentally, the last time the Orioles won the pennant).

The other day, I visited that old farm and I saw a flash of royal blue in a leafless maple tree. It was a male bluebird, perhaps a descendant of Orson and Babs, and he seemed to be scouting a birdhouse near the site of our long gone original. I felt pretty good about that. I think this is going to be a good year for birds.

If you have an item for This Just In, give me a call on 332 6166, or drop me a line at The Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278 0001. Love to hear from you.

Rep. Joe Wilson giving a one minute speech on government run health care on the House floor on Sept. Joe Wilson’s rebuke of President Obama during a joint session of Congress is drawing a lot of attention and scorn, along with comparisons to the inflammatory rhetoric at recent town hall meetings, but the substance of his comments did not stray far from what many members say almost every day on the House floor.

At the beginning of most legislative days, representatives come to the House floor to deliver partisan one minute speeches. Although members sometimes speak about their constituents or policy proposals, party leaders have taken an active role in coordinating one minutes so that they consist of attacks on the other party or a defense of one’s own party. Typical Toms Shoes ly considered the leader of his party, the president and his policies are often the focus of these partisan speeches.

Congressional observers, and even some members, have tried, unsuccessfully, to curb the use of one minutes because they start the day off with a partisan tone.

A 1997 rep Toms Shoes ort by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Civility in the House of Representatives,” recommended that the House eliminate one minutes or move them to the end of the day. A bipartisan group of more than 50 members of Congress sent letters to the House speaker in the 104th, 105th and 106th Congresses to complain that one minutes had become “a series [of] soundbite assaults . . . Among the titles of Wilson’s speeches: “Democrat Hoax Bill Was All About Political Cover,” “Democrats’ Defeatist Supplemental Bill” and “Democrats’ Plan Doesn’t Cut It.”

Democrats are also active in the one minute partisan bashing sessions. In fact, on June 19, 2003, in a one minute speech in support of AmeriCorp, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D Calif., referred to President George W. Bush as a liar, saying “the president did not tell the truth to the Ame Toms Shoes rican people in the State of the Union. He lied to the American people around the country when he promised to expand this program.”

The speaker pro tempore ruled that Lofgren was out of order and “must refrain from personal criticism of the president.”

Wilson’s outburst was extreme, and resulted in the House approving a resolution disapproving of the interruption of a presidential speech. But although the resolution was not inherently ideolo Toms Shoes gical in nature, only 19 members broke with their party (12 Democrats voted no, with five more voting present, and seven Republicans voted yes; none of the Minnesota delegation) an indication of the way in which partisan actors and partisan politics shape choices in today’s polarized era.

Understanding the premeditated partisan conflict that begins each day in the House makes Wilson’s outburst in the same chamber no less egregious. But it becomes slightly less surprising, ranking as an extreme example of how acrimonious the House has become.

I really like the idea of sending them all to a retreat a mandatory one in northern MN maybe in November or December. No fancy digs, just a slightly improved lumberjack bunkhouse (2 for the women). The heat would be minimal so everyone would be encouraged to bring a sleeping bag. Everyone would have to make their bed, take turns cooking and serving each other, sweep the floor and take out the trash (to the composter, we assume). They would be forced to spend some time every day all by themselves in the woods or in the bunkhouse so they had time think and ponder, maybe come to terms with themselves and each other,pray, meditate, or just be quiet (probably big change for many of them).